In Whack

Friday, October 01, 2004

Let me phrase one more time what I wish to say: If I didn't know anything — were a political naïf, being introduced to the two candidates for the first time — I would vote for Kerry. Based on that infernal debate.

but I did watch the debate last night. I agree that Kerry is more polished. The man was on the debate team at Yale, I believe, and has spent 20 years in the world's biggest debating society, the U.S. Senate. Problem was, though, was that Kerry's vacuous. There's nothing there. International summit? We've got 30+ nations in the alliance against Iraq -- are France and Germany that important? Especially when neither of them has much of a military to speak of?

The President wasn't as smooth, but you can tell he knows who he is and what he wants and needs to do. You can tell he has core principles -- that when things are murky, he's got ideals that will guide him through.

I don't know that Kerry can say the same thing. That's not to say that Kerry's completely amoral, but looking at his record, he's pretty clearly an opportunist. His vacillations on Iraq, his being a proud war hero who committed war crimes (that's a fun combo), etc. Bush doesn't have this problem.

In Return of the Jedi, why did the Ewoks believe C3PO to be a god but not Chewbacca? The big guy should have been like a titan to them. That would have been an interesting story line, Chewie torn between continuing the fight with his friends or staying on Endor to rule a kingdom on mini-mes.

ROTJ is definitely too silly to enjoy much. It would have been much better had it taken itself as seriously as The Empire Strikes Back, but alas, we have Chewbacca performing a Tarzan yell. We have some schtick between Han and C3PO. We have a too-cute Ewok smacking himself with a bola. We have Darth Vader playing with action figures. Wait...maybe I'm getting my movies confused. Regardless, I thought that stuff was funny as a kid, but now I find it to be mindless pandering. As one of my coworkers told me yesterday: "George Lucas is a whore."

Now, episodes I and II continue with the pandering, but there is at least one improvement: the fight scenes. In episodes IV through VI, it looks like the actors spent exactly 5 minutes learning how to fence. When Luke freaks out when Vader figures out that there's a sister, he (Luke) just starts swinging his saber wildly (yet slowly) from side-to-side like an angry four-year-old and actually defeats Vader using absolutely no technique whatsoever. Contrast that with episodes I and II where the fights are much quicker and martial-artsy. The Gui Gon-Obi Wan-Darth Maul and the Count Dooku-Obi Wan-Anakin-Yoda duels are pretty good. Not Crouching Tiger good, but they beat the snot out of the lame fights in the later episodes. When all 6 episodes are on DVD, some kid is going to watch all of them straight through for the first time and wonder why Anakin/Vader and Obi Wan never improved at saber dueling and actually worsened over time. Maybe Lucas should figure out a way to fix that, since he doesn't have any problems changing everything else.

if anyone wants one. Just send me an e-mail to the address on the right.

If you're not familiar with Gmail, it's pretty sweet. 1GB of storage for free, but right now it's in beta and you can get an account by invitation only. You can find more about it at the Gmail website.

Thursday, September 30, 2004

No big screw ups, no big points scored at the other's expense. No fiery exchanges. Kind of boring, really.

Ah, Bush just said we will continue to have an all-volunteer military. That'll assuage some fears.

Anyway, to be fair, I think Kerry was the better debater. He was quicker to organize his thoughts and respond and didn't fumble his words as much. And Bush was more repetitive, which I didn't like. But Kerry wasn't so much better that it'll make a difference. And his ideas stink. I stand by my earlier prediction: the faithful will not waver and most of the undecideds will still be.

Is what Putin doing to combat terrorism okay? Bush says no, that there needs to be checks and balances in democracy, and Putin is sending signals that he doesn't agree. Blah blah blah, democracy's a good thing and Putin needs to recognize this.

Kerry: Whoa, quoting George Will. The Devil must be banging on his furnace, trying to get it working again. Blah blah blah, North Korea.

I bet they move on to some other topic quickly. And yes, they have. Now it turns to character, and I'm not sure this is a fair question, that is, to ask Bush if Kerry has the character to lead. This just invites them to attack each other on a personal level, and I thought this was supposed to be about the issues.

So, anyway, Bush is back on the flip-flopper bit, and how Kerry would send mixed signals to our allies and signs of weakness to our enemies. Blah blah blah.

Kerry won't talk about differences of character. Good call on his part, but then he attacks Bush for being too certain, even when he's supposedly wrong. So I guess he did attack his character. Whatever.

Kerry seems to think that if he just keeps repeating that he has always been consistent on Iraq that it must be so. Again, whatever.

Before, the commentators were talking about the lights used to signal when a candidate goes over the time limit. They (the commentators) said this was a demand made by the Bush camp because they worried about Kerry going well over the limit without the viewers ever realizing it. It's been my observation that Bush goes over his limit more often than Kerry. Isn't it ironic?

as he demonstrates in his talk of North Korea, pointing out that China and Russia are part of the process. I guess Kerry would rather we bombed them instead. Too late, I'm afraid. They already have nukes thanks to the Clinton/Carter mistake.

Oh, now we get the real story on North Korea from Kerry. He sure likes to invoke Colin Powell. This is probably the third time he's said Powell wanted to do such and such and Bush did otherwise. And Kerry, surely you know by the time Bush was sworn in North Korea's nuclear weapons program was well underway.

that is, pointing out how rude Kerry is, and how that's not good diplomacy. He insults our allies by discrediting the coalition. He called the Iraqi minister a puppet. How does that build partnerships? Not Kerry's kind of partnerships, I guess.

Bush has been on the defensive this whole time. He needs to find some positive things to say, to talk about the future. He points out past successes (now he's talking about Libya) but has said little of what we can expect.

on what the federal government's responsibilities are, since it says it needs to give more funding to police and fire departments around the country. Last I checked, the police and fire departments are a local responsibility. I'd say that, but I doubt Bush would disagree, that he just has different priorities, looking more outward than inward, probably claim they've spent enough.

Yep, Bush just said they've spent $3.1 billion on fire and police. And he just said we have to focus on offense.

Kerry's going off about tax cuts. Give me a break. If Bush hadn't kept the tax cuts, Kerry would be up there complaining about how the war has wrecked the economy.

when Bush pulls this "it doesn't matter what Kerry thinks because there's no chance he's going to win" stuff. I'm sure there's plenty of conspiracists out there that take that as a sign that he's going to rig the election.

Kerry is repeating the same old line that Iraq was a mistake, that it's a distraction from the real war in Afghanistan.

Whoa, Kerry just said it was a misjudgment on Bush's part to "outsource" a military operation in Afghanistan, yet doesn't he want to use other country's militaries in Iraq? Huh?

Monday, September 27, 2004

I've hardly had any time

for anything lately, so I apologize for the lack of activity. I was in Boston all last week for a conference, spent all day Sunday in Kansas City (mostly watching the Chiefs lose...grumble) and I'll be leaving in a bit for a two-day business trip to Texas. I haven't been around a television much, nor have I taken the time to check the web, so I don't have a clue what's going on in the world.

The conference was superb. I learned some new methods (new to me, anyway) for managing software projects that will mean some big changes for our little team of developers, but will also mean we'll be more responsive and less bug-prone. I'm excited. Really.